This professional certificate program focuses on foundational information and specific skills for educators, instructional designers, and other staff who develop digital resources for courses.

The courses provide skills that satisfy the current WCAG standards upon which U.S., Canadian, and European Union accessibility guidelines, policies, and laws are based.

Those who complete the professional certificate will:

• Understand the legal and historical background of accessibility, universal design for learning, and applying these to course design.
• Develop accessible Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF files
• Create accessible videos

The courses were developed with educators in mind. The courses explain why and how to make common course materials accessible with free or inexpensive software that is commonly available at many institutions. Technical IT jargon is not used.

For U.S. Institutions

An important question to ask is why do our digital materials need to be accessible? The answer is two-fold.

Four federal laws require accessibility of all digital resources. Some states, including Illinois, also have laws mandating the accessibility of digital resources for institutions of higher education.

• Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
• Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)
• 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) (2010)
• Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (2018)
• Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA 2.0) (2018)

Secondly, courses that are made accessible to students with disabilities also prove useful students without any document disabilities. For instance, video captioning helps students who are English language learners or consume content in noisy (or quiet) locations.

Required Courses